Living in the Pacific Northwest, we don't often get to watch our beloved Cleveland Browns play on TV. This is understandable; the Browns have been a horrible football team ever since they moved back to (restarted in, rather) Cleveland a few years ago. Who, besides a Clevelander, would want to suffer through a Browns game? Occassionally, however, they'll play a team with more of a national following.
This past Sunday, they played the Green Bay Packers. The Packers do have a fairly significant fanbase, so I checked the TiVo listings and the Browns vs. Packers game was scheduled for 1:00 Pacific time on KIRO Channel 7! My wife was excited and put on her Browns sweatshirt and we waited for the earlier New England Patriots vs. Carolina Panthers game to finish. The final seconds of that game ticked down and then, after a commercial break....
An infomercial! And not just any infomercial, but one for a convicted conman peddling his book of medical misinformation. I sent off a note to KIRO TV:
Why do you opt to show an infomercial for a book that scams people with incorrect medical information (Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know About by Kevin Trudeau) when there's a perfectly good football game on (Cleveland vs. Green Bay)? My wife and I are very disappointed in your choice of programming, and this reinforces our view of the declining quality of network TV.
Thinking about it later, I realized that while I definitely wasn't pleased that KIRO chose to show hours of commercials instead of our football game, I was more upset that a local television station would do a disservice to the community that it serves by helping this slimeball push his snake oil. Whatever you think about a fool and his money, when a smooth-talking salesman tries to take advantage of the sick and desparate, a local television station should care enough about its community of viewers to keep stuff like this off the air.
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